Mom! That's the Arcade Game..ON NINTENDO!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Part 1

Arcade games were always something cool and new in the 70s, 80s and most of the 90s. Quarter sucking, at times cheap, but always fun and addicting games filled the halls, rooms or whole buildings full of these cabinets of  AWESOME. Problem was after you left the arcade you were left wanting more, and you had 2 base options... spend/seek more money, or hope there was a port for your home pc or console. Atari, Commodore, Coleco, Nintendo, they all had different arcade port offerings but the N.E.S would for a very long time reign as the console that had the widest variety of ports.
N.E.S ports were known for either being as direct as possible, having some re-tooled game play, a good sized overhaul to make the games more fitting for home use (more levels etc) or were just games "based" on the "arcade smash" which usually meant a massive retooling / re make of the game concept. Let's explore a few of the arcade to n.e.s ports that I feel where awesome whether or not they are direct ports or "based on the arcade game". Soon enough I will do a post about some of the dung pile arcade to N.E.S ports that were also out there, but today I want to talk about the good stuff! Prior to going on I'd like to add that I have played and completed both the arcade and N.E.S ports of all the games mentioned in this post today, so no talking out of my ass here.



Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Arcade Game (Known as "Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles: The Coin OP" in EU Regions for personal home pc ports, Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles 2 the Arcade Game for the EU/PAL N.E.S, Known as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in it's Arcade Form and as TMNT 1989 Classic Arcade on Xbox Live, PS2/XBOX ports via unlock feature in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 Battle Nexus for those consoles)

-Arcade, NES, Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, DOS, ZX Spectrum, PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube, XBLA, Virtual Console Arcade-

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a runaway smash cartoon series, excellent toy series, awesome comic book series and it was also a crazy chaotic arcade game by Konami one of the arcade leaders and favorite 3rd party developer/publisher in the N.E.S era. Four player Mayhem, great soundtrack, smooth action, and just some un-nameable cool feeling that you were kicking so much ass were some of the perks that made this game so great, but yet the N.E.S was stuck with a average generic adventure game featuring the Turtles. Soon enough hungry N.E.S gamers would get their wish with a port of the arcade TMNT game called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Arcade Game! and it came with free pizza in the form of a coupon for a free personal pizza from pizza hut, fuck ya!

TMNT2TAG was no mere direct port, while trying to be as true to the game as possible Konami (ahem sorry..ULTRA... post on this later)knew that many a game before it had raised the bar on how to do arcade to N.E.S ports and Konami delivered. New Levels, redesigned enemy placement to avoid technical issues (slow down), slightly more difficult enemies to make up for the mass amount of enemies that would rush you in the arcade game, new bosses, and slightly tighter control! Awesome as all this was the only bummer dude type moment came from the lack of 4 player support in this cart but at least we had a two player option which worked well and I am sure was only due to again technical limitations. Pizza eaten, hours left behind, a few "ACK No's!!" later you were left feeling that while the odd smells, the loud ambient noises and sticky floors were missing, you were happy as could be with this fun, well done and most of all GNARLY port.

Arcade






N.E.S







Contra
-Arcade, Famicom/NES, MSX2, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, MS-DOS, PlayStation 2, Xbox 360 (XBLA), Nintendo DS, Virtual Console, Mobile Phone, PlayStation Network-
(Known as Gyzor in EU)

Contra was not the most popular of arcade games, while not to say it was a dud it was just not exactly one of Konami's super titles in terms of popularity. Personally I would say that I only liked Contra as much as I did since it was constantly in rotation at my local laundromat. Packing at times hard to avoid enemy placement that required some memorization, but yet very enjoyable spaz type play that grew on me the game had some decent twitch factors to it. Learning the game over time I was able to beat it with at the most 2 quarters and I was quite happy with that (rastan was another one that I was sooo happy to beat) but sadly while I had heard of Super Contra, I could never find a Cabinet Having beat it so often thought left me a bit 'meh" when I saw a N.E.S Contra at Sears one day but curious enough I scouted a rental copy and that's when I really came to the conclusion that some arcade games found a good swift shot of new life on the N.E.S (though this early on I had been burned by some shitty ports)

Right as you jump into the game you get that already familiar feeling of smoother yet tighter controls that was a staple in good/great arcade to N.E.S ports. Oddly enough while the truth would be that graphically Contra (and most if not all ports) were inferior on the N.E.S, Contra just had a look that felt so perfect and looked more so perfect for the game. Levels were slightly extended in size, not much enemy compromise (numbers) and if anything the powers up felt better planned out/balanced. My only worry were the "3D" levels that were in the arcade game. When I saw these levels in action in the N.E.S game I was blown away (later I learned about MMC's) and by the time I sorta woke up from my "WHOA!" trance I realized just how well fleshed out the game was! More challenging than the arcade game due to bigger level size and just much more atmospheric than it's big brother Contra found a whole new life of it's own on the N.E.S. Searching for Super Contra was not an issue for me no more, I would wait for the N.E.S Port!

N.E.S










Arcade






Double Dragon 1-3
-way too many ports to name all the platforms-

Double Dragon, the series name alone speaks mass amount of praise and even some dreadful hate among arcade goers of the 80s. Love it or hate it, you heard the name, seen the games, played them or heard stories about other players encountering some glitch, beating a nearly perfect score or how they took no damage etc etc. Double Dragon II would continue said urban legacy with a new control scheme and slightly tougher enemy patterns and more swarms of em to deal with at a time, oddly enough Double Dragon 2 cabinets did not seem to circulate as much as original Double Dragon cabinets but I managed to sneak in some time with the game. Double Dragon 3 upon first look seems so different, sounded so different and had some whacked out story that seem to fit better in a cheaply written book than the beloved beat em up series. EGADS man what the hell did they do to the game? Enough about what the games stood for in the arcade scene, let's get into theme here shall we? the awesome N.E.S ports of the series, amazingly enough even Double Dragon 3 gets it's ass saved thanks to the N.E.S

Double Dragon on the N.E.S followed what was the most common formula for N.E.S ports, make up for the technical limitations with deeper game play, more levels, varied A.I. Digging past this all we also fin a new game play mode simply called Mode B, which was a simple 1 on 1 mode where you could choose from either of the lead characters or 4 enemy characters from the main story mode. Mode B included rather impressive graphic use for the N.E.S at the time, though the A.I was rather unfair and over powered. Double Dragon's main mode also changed around the game play enough to have it stand on it's own merits and even  well past those of previous games that raised the bar for ports. Arcade players would recall having no limits on the moves the characters could perform, however the N.E.S version adopted an experience system which would award you with new moves as you gained levels. Frustrating at first but it also taught you how to play the game better so as to earn those perks or suffer (per se). Overall in my opinion and other's Double Dragon not only followed a good idea on how to do ports but also paved the way for changes that could improve an already great game. Based on the arcade smash became a phrase that could honestly mean "AWESOME" vs "oh crap it's another pacman for the 2600 repeat!!!!!!!!"

Double Dragon 2 hit the N.E.S hard with another build up on the previous formula for improving an arcade to home port while making the technical cuts seem null. Name alone drove the games popularity and it's a good thing that the name could sell the product as the game now had it's north american box tagged with "Acclaim" a publisher that to the hard core, could mean a garbage game or a hidden gem. Acclaims marketing muscle was put behind the game in full blast but once again in gaming when you are tainted as a publisher, that's that! Double Dragon 2 once again gave us extended levels, and slightly altered A.I, more missions, and polished game play that made Double Dragon a hit but lacked that Mode B form the previous game....instead we got CO-OP! Difficulty as in the first game could be unforgiving to the casual crowd, but was a lot more balanced with less spotty moments (Minus the platforming portions like the conveyor belts or those stupid spikes) and you could even inflict friendly fire (er damage). Rewarding (or challenging ..to me it was a reward) good players was a final level that was only accessible by playing the game in it's hardest difficulty which even included a whole new final boss and awesome theme! Double Dragon 2 fixed all the mistakes of it's arcade counter part (IMHO the arcade game was good but was just more of the same) but also like the previous N.E.S version added more life into the series. Beat em up 101!

Double Dragon 3 was a disaster in the arcades, from the crappy "credits' store which would even charge you real money for weapons, the odd graphical style (static images looked ok..motion looked like someone was hitting pause a lot, aka choppy) and the questionable story and music pretty much doomed the game. Acclaim once took the N.A publisher reigns for the title but thankfully once again it was only the publisher. Ads were all over the place, tv spots ran very often, the game play footage seemed to mimic that of the arcade game, my heart sank.. I would rent this before buying. Lightning was seen in the sky a third time around, however the thunder was not as awesome. Double Dragon 3 for the N.E.S was a great game in every right, and while the port was another fixer up, the core elements were not too far changed from 2 and the remaining elements from the arcade version did not really help the game. Story was just too complex for the fighter, the additional characters while they felt less tacked on than in the arcade version just felt tacky and tolerable at best. Game play while not a huge departure from Double Dragon 2 was a bit smoother and was nearly perfect in response, but there was just not enough charm in this title to really make it better than Double Dragon 2. Efforts seem to be too focused on re-tooling the game too heavily in efforts to fix the mess that was Double Dragon 3 in the arcade, and while I can appreciate the efforts, the magic was not there anymore. Double Dragon 3 was a perfect example on how to fix a bumbling mess and brought justice to the franchise but as I said before the remaining taint of the arcade game that was left in, soured the game a bit. IMHO too much time and effort was spent on fixing it and not adding features or making the levels more enjoyable as in the previous two efforts. Great, but not classic.

Double Dragon (NES)

Double Dragon (Arcade)

Double Dragon 2 NES

Double Dragon 2 (Arcade)

Double Dragon 3 (NES)

Double Dragon 3 (Arcade)

Honorable Mentions

Ninja Gaiden (Series)

 Ninja Gaiden Started off as generic but somewhat challenging arcade beat em up,but sticking with the formula for N.E.S ports the game took on a whole new life, the game play was heavily modified, levels so much larger, bosses were something else and the game was balls to the wall hard! While I loved a challenge the difficulty was so mind boggling at the time and combine that with the fact that a lot of jumps were laced with almost unavoidable hits and you got a few reasons to put this series down a tiny notch but even then the series remains a test for skill. Xbox, and current gen versions hold the difficulty legacy true.

Punchout!! (nes on top)

Punchout got a rather faithful conversion as far as the core game and looks go. Game play was simplified a bit to fit the N.E.S controller but remained mostly intact. More variety in fighters was tossed in along with adding a bit more personality to those that made the cut to the home cart. Mike Tyson was even tossed into a particular run of the game. Great example again on how to do ports. Missing voices somewhat changed the overall experience of playing the arcade game but honestly this would have been too hard on the hardware and while it never ruined the game, somehow I always missed them. On it's own the game stood out magically and would end up becoming one of most beloved N.E.S games, ever.. Period.!

Tons of titles were cut from my original post idea but I think I will take a friend's idea to split it up, since some of titles that fell in my list under honorable mentions really do deserve a dedicated write up. Part 2 of this particular topic will happen soon enough as I honestly want to improve on my formatting here a bit and also not subject so many titles to simple write ups. Today's post was done out of love for doing this here blog, today should have been my lazy day to do nothing but instead I will post up dlc for this and yesterday's post by tonight! Thank you for reading as always and before I forget...

Can anyone tell me what is REALLY going on here??